In pictures: the editors of the Independent

In pictures: the editors of the Independent

The Independent has had seven editors on its 24-year journey from City Road to Kensington. And here they all are ...

Friday 8 January 2010 12.57 EST

The three founders of the Independent: Andreas Whittam Smith, who became its first editor; Stephen Glover, foreign editor and later founding editor of the Independent on Sunday; and Matthew Symonds, deputy editor.

The next year, Whittam Smith took on a second job, as chief executive of the Independent's parent company, Newspaper Publishing. He was shifted to chairman in 1994, after a consortium led by Mirror Group gained a majority stake in the firm, and ceased to be editor later that year.

Ian Hargreaves, who succeeeded Whittam Smith as editor in 1994. This was also the year that the Independent left its original City Road base, moving in with the Mirror in Canary Wharf. He remained in the role until 1996

Andrew Marr, who as political correspondent shared the byline of the lead story in the Independent's first issue, succeeeded to the editor's chair in May 1996. He undertook an adventurous but ultimately unsuccessful revamp, and was sacked in 1998 after refusing to make another round of job cuts.

Marr was replaced with another flamboyant figure, Rosie Boycott, who had made a splash editing the Indpendent on Sunday with a campaign for the legalisation of cannabis. In March, Tony O'Reilly's Independent News & Media gained control of the paper from Mirror Group, and reinstalled Marr as joint editor. In April, Boycott left to edit the Express...

...but that May, the merry-go-round came to a stop, with the appointment of Simon Kelner. He was another Independent original - deputy sports editor at the paper's launch - and stayed in the job for a decade, during which he successfully took the Independent tabloid. He's now editor in chief